Dear NDI/KE Partners,

I have just landed in Lokichoggio, Kenya, from Sudan.  We flew in yesterday from Ethiopia and landed in Juba—without visas!  Because of my quick turn-around from Haiti before I left on this trip, I did not have time to send my passport off to get a Sudan Visa.  So we decided to “fly by faith” and hope we could get it at the airport in Juba.  While we were not arrested, they did threaten to turn us around and send us back to Addis Ababa!  So we pled for mercy—which the Custom and Immigration Officer finally gave us!  So thanks for praying us through another potentially volatile situation.  Wonder or wonders, we were allowed to fly on to Malakal without a Visa—a real miracle.

We went to Malakal to meet with our primary Sudanese partner, Dr. John Nyikako.  But upon our arrival, he was not at the airport.  After several hours waiting, we got a ride with a United Nations pickup truck to a local hotel.  Fearing that John might have had an accident, the next morning we went to the local hospital plus the UN one.  But no John.  We also made the rounds of several churches thinking we might find someone there who know where he might be.  Finally a UN Official told us that there had been a tribal conflict the night before in which some 40 people were killed.  As a result of this fighting, both the road and Nile river was closed down to all transportation.  Figuring that John was cut off from us for an indefinite time, we had to fly on to our next destination—the Hospital in Akot (Akot Medical Mission) run by Mustard Seed International. 

We went there to see if we could help them with their small vegetable garden.  While they had made a good start, we realized very quickly that we could significantly enhance their small plot to a much larger one with the quarter acre drip irrigation kit, along with some better quality seeds.  While this was our first visit there, we quickly saw the fingerprints of the Lord on this visit.  We met a gardener there who had trained years earlier at one of the very first Double Harvest projects in Kenya.  So he was familiar with this drip irrigation system and very eager to get it started at the Hospital to give better vegetables to the patients.  So the chances of us meeting up with this brother in the middle of Sudan was one in a million!  But that’s no challenge for our Sovereign Lord who networks his people together to accomplish His will!

So look at the video clip and pictures below and be blessed by what your prayers and partnership continue to make possible.

More later from Kurungu, Kenya, from our Samburu Sports Camp…

In His Love,

(For Len and Arie VanWingerden, Bert Lemkes and Randy Durham)

The LORD will guide you always;    
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land    
and will strengthen your frame.    
You will be like a well-watered garden,    
like a spring whose waters never fail. - Isaiah 58:11